Is anyone else noticing this? At least 90% of the calls that come to our house phone these days are spam. At least. It’s gotten so bad that when we do get a real call from a friend, relative, or legitimate business caller, we often miss it because there seems so little point in rushing to get to the phone before it stops ringing. Most of the calls we care about come to our cell phones.
It seems like it’s gotten a lot worse in the last year or so. And yet, I’m reluctant to give up our land line, partly because many of our legitimate contacts know that number but not our cell numbers, and partly because… I don’t know, I just don’t hold with being driven from the use of the phone number I’ve owned and loved for decades, just on account of some lowlifes who are determined to prey on the vulnerable. Plus, just the other day, I used our land line to send a fax. So it still has relevance, right? Right?
You want to make a billion dollars? Invent a device that will send an electric shock back up the phone line to anyone who makes, records, or otherwise causes to exist spam. (Not counting that ham in a can stuff. That’s okay, as long as I don’t have to eat it.) I probably shouldn’t say things like that. Bad dog.
Andrew Timson
Personally I don't have a land line, because I've never had one. I got my cell phone back in high school, and have kept that number ever since.
I can see where needing to send a fax could be a problem, but it's not like I have a fax machine anyways. On the occasions where it's been necessary, I've simply used the fax machine at work (which isn't really an option for you).
I'm surprised there isn't an easy way to just send faxes from a smartphone, but if there is I can't find it…
Mike Williams
You can transfer your landline number to a cell phone now. It's easy to do,and there ways to blacklist unwanted calls, either with androids built in blacklist, or free apps. Hope this helps if you weren't aware.
Jeffrey A. Carver
I had forgotten, actually. But it wouldn't do me any good. It would just shift all the annoying calls to my cellphone (which is starting to pick up some of its own as it is). Apps might be great, but I don't have a smart phone. And it's hard to imagine that it would be any more effective than my email spam filters, which do stop most of the spam, but at the cost of stopping some real mail, as well.